Spent 4 hours last night on a mates bike trying to index tge front mech.

Now I have a reasonable experience with bikes and have no problems setting up MTB's and road bikes normally.

Setup is a Bonty X lite double Cyclocross crankset/GXP BB. STI = Ultegra 6600 front mech = Campag.

He fell off and sracped and sl bent the left drop and shifter. The inside down shift is a bit graunchy.

I cannot get to a position where the chain will shift from teh inner chainring to the outer if on higher than sprocket 4 and if I set the outer limiter so it will when on spocket 1 (11t) is jumps off outside. I have started from scratch 3 times and followed my own setup and teh ultegra instructions (which are basically the same)

Do the STW hive think it it a busted lever? The mech, seat tube roller cable redirector and cables all seem fine when examined.

He also said it has never shifted quite right from when he had it new 5 months ago. Its a cyclocross frmae with 68mm BB. The bonty crankset seems setup right with one spacer as without the spacer the crank wont bolt up tight enough? I gave up at 9pm last night.

presumably the bontrager crankset is actually compatible with a truvative BB?

if you don't use the shifter (i.e. just pull the cable by hand/with pliers) does it work?

Well it came from another cyclocross bike i.e. OEM (with the same std 68mm BB) onto a new frame built by a shop.

It think does work without the shifter but I didn't try it no – bugger forgot that trick 🙁 Hmm maybe it is the front mech?

Aparently it was OK till mid way though a ride yesterday (a few days after the fall) so?

like the weekendwarrior i'd set the stops by pulling the cable. that eliminates the shifter from proceedings.
if you can get it to shift and get the chain stay in place like that then a process of elimination follows…

Hmm – in hindsight I had set the upper and lower limiter. It is fine on the smallest sprocket i.e. from inner to outer chainring. On the middle to upper cassette it with either not shift to the outer chainring. It will only shift if I allow the outer limit out a bit . However on the smallest sprocet on this setup again it jumps off outside the big chainring (if tyhat makes any sense).

He's taken it back to the LBS he got it from so I'll see what they suggest? Perhaps its just me being a crap mechanic 😯

Front mechs seem so specific to chainring sizes these days it may be the non std chainring sizes that are the problem.

cynic-al – yeh poss make sense 🙂 hmm – there is a pblem thats nagging me that its a Giga-X-pipe BB but all the data I can find suggest no spacers. It has one on the drive side. We took it out and can't torque up without the spacer i.e. axle is too long? None of this makes any sense to me 😯

Futher investiagtion suggest its a rebadged Truvative Rouleur GXP chainset:

http://www.bike-discount.de/pdf/products/490.pdf

The instruction say NO spacer 😯

Could the problems arise if the chainline is too far out?

Update LBS said front Mech failing (as wasn't new to the bike) and the cage was a bit bent (i.e. too wide) – He said a bit of play in the pivots + poor ramping on the outer chain and sl. bend cage = poor shifting 🙂 Sounds good to me 🙂